Liz Carioti got a new job and a promotion within two months — from box office employee at Turning Stone Resort to box office manager in Armory Square.

But she can’t take all the credit. It took the help of a friend who introduced her to the open position.

‘Knowing everybody is so important in the music industry because it’s such a small industry,’ she said.

This year, her professional network expanded by 22 people — members of the first graduating class of the Bandier Program for Music and the Entertainment Industries. It’s a network that extends from one end of the nation to the other.

One graduate is at AEG Live in Los Angeles. Another manages rapper and songwriter Hoodie Allen in New York City. One works with a talent scouting company in Nashville.

About 80 percent of the Bandier students in the Class of 2011 are currently employed, including one who graduated a year earlier, said David Rezak, director of the program.

That statistic might have been the result of what Rezak said was a ‘profoundly focused marketing campaign’ that included two full-page advertisements in Billboard magazine. The Bandier faculty also reached out to music industry leaders by sending them headshots and introducing the graduating class, Rezak said.

‘We gave them a great platform,’ he said, but it was also ‘a tribute to their hard work and their initiative.’

It was the kind of hard work and initiative that Rachel Helman demonstrated in her commitment to the program.

Helman was recruited to Syracuse University as a softball player, which meant she was often too busy to take advantage of the opportunities available to the average Bandier student.

But that didn’t stop her from going abroad to London in her senior year and securing an internship at a fashion public relations firm. Nor did it stop her from attending Bandier-sponsored lectures from guest speakers.

Speakers come in every Tuesday during the fall semester and every Thursday during the spring, Rezak said, to teach students about the constantly changing music industry. The lectures also introduce the speakers to the Bandier Program, allowing for networking opportunities, he said.

Sometimes Rezak invited students to have dinner with the speakers. Sometimes it led to an internship — and students are required to have three before graduating, he said.

There are too many paths in the music industry that can be pursued but cannot be taught in a classroom, Rezak said. Internships give the Bandier students an understanding of those paths, so students are encouraged to have more than the required three to get as much experience as possible.

As a result, the Bandier faculty tries to help students branch out and get into the primary music market, such as in Los Angeles or New York City.

‘Let’s face it: We’re not in New York City, we’re not in Los Angeles,’ Rezak said.

But Cate Davis thinks being in Syracuse has its advantages.

Bandier students have the opportunity to organize music programs and shows that the city of Syracuse or SU does not provide, said Davis, a professional intern as a park events coordinator at Walt Disney in Orlando.

‘It sort of gave us a little bit of a laboratory,’ she said. ‘Syracuse is like a real-life lab.’

Bandier students organized the Best Coast concert last week. They are involved in making the Block Party arrangements. A few of them organized and promoted the Asher Roth concert last year.

One of the best parts is that these students don’t need to know how to play an instrument — and not all of them do. Unlike other music programs, the Bandier Program doesn’t require an audition, just an interest in the industry.

That was one of the factors that lured some in the Class of 2011 to become part of the Bandier Program experiment.

‘We called them our guinea pigs the whole way through,’ said Lisa Steele, Bandier’s program coordinator.

The end of every semester was the end of a new experiment.

Experiment No. 1: trying to find a professor for the program. Then freshmen, the Class of 2011, were invited to sit in on presentations from three candidates who were applying to be a professor, Steele said. They helped choose the professor who would teach them for the rest of their college years, she said.

Experiment No. 2: getting the students involved in the LA Semester program. The opportunity to study in Los Angeles began the same year as the Bandier Program, Steele said. So the Bandier faculty scrambled to make sure the Class of 2011 got the chance to go to the West Coast and experience the music culture there.

And then there is also the constant revising of the curriculum to reflect the ever-changing music industry, such as a new focus on social media.

These experiences — in addition to the more traditional ones in classrooms — turned the students and faculty of the Bandier Program into what many of them refer to as a family.

‘They are in the office all the time, we just become friends,’ Steele said. Some students need more help, and others are more self-sufficient, she said. She tries to be their ‘mom away from home.’

Now that she has watched her students grow, the most important thing is for them to be happy, Steele said. Then comes their responsibility to be a support system for the underclassmen and to lay the foundation for the next soon-to-be graduates of the Bandier Program.

shkim11@syr.edu 

Published on September 13, 2011 at 12:00 pm